


when you think of love (do you think of pain)

by lemonella



Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: 2x11, Angst, Buried Alive, Canon through 2x10, F/M, Kidnapping, Tucy, chenford, spoilers for 2x11
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23777800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonella/pseuds/lemonella
Summary: “I’ve got her! I’ve got her!” Tim shouted, already on his knees frantically digging in the dirt. It was loose--a good sign that he was in the right spot, as if Lucy’s ring wasn’t confirmation enough. More hands quickly joined his.Finally,finally, his fingers touched on smooth metal. Tim yanked the lid off, tossing it aside as he peered into the barrel to see--Nothing.Where was Lucy?
Relationships: Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen
Comments: 12
Kudos: 99





	when you think of love (do you think of pain)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Mess is Mine" by Vance Joy.
> 
> Has the fandom decided on a ship name yet? Chenford? Tucy?
> 
> I'm trying to improve my writing, so any constructive feedback (about grammar, accidentally switching tenses, etc.) is appreciated! Also this is un-beta'd so please point out any errors, even small typos!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Dream" by OneRepublic.

“I’ve got her! I’ve got her!” Tim shouted, already on his knees frantically digging in the dirt. It was loose--a good sign that he was in the right spot, as if Lucy’s ring wasn’t confirmation enough. A small doubt in the back of his mind whispered that maybe Caleb put her ring here on purpose because it was the grave site of another victim, not Lucy. Maybe--

 _Stop._ Tim slammed that little voice away inside a vault and locked it. _She’s here, she has to be._

Because Tim didn’t know what he would do if they didn’t find Lucy--alive--right here, right now. 

Years of ingrained situational awareness were the only reason Tim actually heard the many booted footsteps running toward him and saw more hands join his in the dirt. The slice of a shovel into the ground a few scant inches from his fingers barely registered. 

_Come on, come on._

With the additional help, they had to be getting close. The barrel couldn’t be that deep if he heard the echo with only the stomp of his foot. As the seconds passed, no one said a word, the only sounds the heavy breathing of the officers, the clink of the shovels hitting small rocks, and the rasping of shifting earth.

Tim’s sense of time was gone, his focus only on moving as much dirt as quickly as possible. Finally, _finally_ , his fingers touched on smooth metal. He grabbed for the latch on one side of the lid and _yanked_ \--yanked with all of his frustration, his anger, his guilt, his fear--not wanting the extra moment a second tug would take to open the lid to be the difference between Lucy living or dying. The lid popped off and Tim tossed it aside, peering into the barrel to see--

Nothing.

“No. No!” Tim yelled, echoing the other officers’ own disbelief. “She was supposed to be here! Where the hell is she?!” He banged a fist against the metal barrel in frustration, the reverberation in the empty space seeming to echo in the hollow that was growing in his chest. He let gravity pull him down to the ground and stayed there.

The barrel couldn’t be empty. Lucy was supposed to be in that barrel--alive. With Caleb dead, finding the burial site itself was near impossible, and it would’ve been if not for Lucy’s ring.

Was the ring Caleb’s way of getting the last laugh? He was too confident to have expected them to discover the farm so quickly. Did he leave the ring for himself, a marker to find the exact burial spot more easily? If they scoured the rest of the land on the property, would they find more pieces of jewelry marking the graves of their owners?

Or did Caleb leave the ring specifically for them? Was he sadistic enough to put the ring here just to torture them with the hope of finding Lucy, knowing that she was buried somewhere else they’d never find in time?

If Lucy wasn’t in that barrel, then where the hell was she? Was she alive, or-- _No. She’s not dead. Take a breath, Tim, and think it through._

Caleb could’ve left the ring, but that wasn’t the only option. Of all the rookies he’d trained, Lucy had the best instincts and raised the bar for cleverness to a new level. She was also a fighter, and a damn good one at that. Lucy could have left the ring as a clue to help them find where she was buried and save her. Or, to help them find her...her body, if they didn’t make it in time.

No Lucy. No Caleb. Just a ring, with an unknown meaning. They were basically at a dead end in their search with no leads. _Fuck._ Where was a yellow brick road when you needed one?

Tim had blocked out the other officers while he mentally spiraled. Outwardly, he was just sitting in the dirt with his head in his hands. He finally tuned back in to the discussion going on around him.

“If Lucy escaped from the barrel, it makes the most sense for her to go west,” Nolan argued. “She wouldn’t head back to the house because of Caleb, so that eliminates east. If he drugged her, she has no idea where she is except that she’s probably still in California. If she heads west, she’ll eventually hit civilization.” 

“You’re assuming she knows where the house is, which isn't visible from here, and could figure out which way is west. Let's say she knows both. Going back to the house is a real possibility because at least there’s a road leading to it. She might’ve thought finding the road was worth the risk of getting close to the house,” Harper said.

Nolan shook his head. “There’s no cover, there’s no way she would’ve been able to sneak back towards the house without Caleb seeing her. And she had no way of knowing if he was still there or not and wouldn’t take the chance of being caught again. Plus, wouldn't we have seen some sign of her as we searched?”

“We don’t even know for sure that Officer Chen was here,” Sergeant Grey said quietly.

Detective Armstrong spoke up. "Caleb had a camera inside the barrel to watch Lucy. I saw him look at it on his phone."

A sudden shout diverted everyone’s attention.

“Hey! I think there’s something written in here!” Jackson’s words echoed as he pulled his head out of the barrel. “I need a flashlight.”

Three were whipped out of utility belts before he’d finished speaking.

Jackson grabbed one, clicked it on, and leaned back down into the oil barrel. “I think it says ‘zero-two.’ Or ‘O2,’ like the chemical formula for oxygen? It’s hard to tell.”

Tim didn’t have the patience to wait for the rookie to decipher the message. “Move, West, let me see.”

Jackson quickly scrambled up and handed over the flashlight. There were times to argue about being capable of reading, but this was not one of them.

Tim leaned over the top of the open barrel and slowly circulated the light around until he saw some dark smudges about halfway up. He levered himself farther into the barrel to get a closer look. It looked like...dried blood?

His gut clenched. _Lucy was hurt._ Whether she already had the injury from Caleb or gave it to herself due to a lack of a writing utensil didn’t matter. His boot was bleeding and he wanted to make someone bleed in return.

Too bad Caleb was already dead.

 _You don’t know it’s her blood_ , that little voice whispered. But he did. Tim knew in his gut it was hers, and looking at the message confirmed it. Despite being her roommate, Jackson clearly hadn’t learned how to decipher Lucy’s scribble. Tim had a lot of practice after months of reviewing her reports.

The two symbols weren’t numbers, they were letters. ‘O’ and ‘z.’

Oz.

As in _The Wizard of Oz_ , Lucy’s favorite movie from childhood. Maybe she’d left him a yellow brick road after all, or at least the first brick.

Tim pulled himself back up out of the barrel and switched off the flashlight. “It says ‘Oz’,” he announced to the waiting officers.

Sergeant Grey’s brows furrowed. “Oz? Are you sure?”

Tim nodded. “100%. It’s in Lucy’s handwriting.” He hesitated before continuing. “And written in blood.”

There was a heavy silence while everyone absorbed this. Jackson was the first to speak up. “What does it mean?”

“I have no idea,” Grey said.

Tim thought back to a couple of months ago when he and Lucy were working on Halloween. 

_They were on foot-patrol in Brentwood Glen, a wealthy neighborhood popular with trick-or-treaters. While Tim watched out for trouble-making teenagers and suspicious adults loitering without any children of their own, Lucy was enjoying herself by pointing out different costumes and quizzing Tim on what they were--and then promptly making fun of him when he got them wrong, which was often. Like he was supposed to know about every new cartoon character from kids TV shows and movies from the last decade. If Lucy didn’t spend so much time with her friends’ kids, he bet she wouldn’t know either._

_“Ok, little girl in the pink dress,” Lucy said, pointing out his next failure. “And you can’t complain about this one being new, because it’s from before you were born.”_

_Tim held back a sigh. He knew he could put a stop to this game at any time,_ should _put a stop to it, but he hated to wipe the smile off of Lucy’s face. She was having so much fun and for once, he didn’t want to be the one to put an end to it. This affluent neighborhood was low risk and they were only here because the mayor was trying to secure votes for next year’s election._

_He glanced at the costume in question. Yep, little girl in a pink dress, all right. He wracked his brain for a minute, finally coming up with, “Sleeping Beauty.”_

_By the look on Lucy’s face, Tim knew he’d gotten it wrong. “I can’t believe you didn’t get this one! Don’t you see the wand in her hand, and the tall crown she’s wearing? It’s Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. From_ The Wizard of Oz? _Don’t try and tell me you’ve never seen it, I know I've heard you mention flying monkeys before.”_

_“Sorry Boot, can’t say I’ve paid much attention to the accessories for pink dresses. They all look the same to me. And frankly I'm surprised you can tell the difference, you've never seemed like the girly type.”_

_Lucy shrugged. “I used to be when I was little. Glinda was actually my Halloween costume when I was eight." Tim raised his eyebrows at her. "What?_ The Wizard of Oz _was my favorite movie at the time, and Glinda was my favorite character--mostly because of the sparkly dress,” Lucy admitted._

_"And did any of the adults handing out candy get your costume right?"_

_"No, they didn't." Lucy said, and Tim saw her face fall, some of her earlier joy dissipating._

_"What happened?" Tim asked. She glanced questioningly at him. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know, Chen. Spit it out.”_

_"Well, there actually was one woman who got my costume right. Sort of. She called me 'Glinda, the Good Witch of the_ South _.' I told her I was actually the Good Witch of the_ North _, but she insisted it was the South and refused to give me any candy until I agreed with her."_

_"And did you?"_

_Lucy smiled slightly. "No. I told her she was meaner than the Wicked Witch of the West and was probably giving out poisoned candy before running back to my mom. Eventually I learned that in the books Glinda actually_ is _the Good Witch of the South, and it’s only in the movie where she’s the from the North. So technically we were both right, although she didn't have to be so mean about it. But the movie is what I fell in love with, so I’ll always think of Glinda as the Good Witch of the North."_

_Before Tim could reply, the radio squawked. “Mid-Wilshire units, there’s an 11-83 at Sunset Boulevard and Church Lane.”_

_“That’s only a few blocks from here. Let’s go,” Tim said, pulling out his radio. “7-Adam-19 responding.”_

_As they headed for the shop, Tim couldn't suppress the image of Chen as an indignant little girl in a poofy pink dress. He smiled. Nice to know his rookie had always been so fierce._

Grey looked around at the officers. “This is our only lead about Chen’s whereabouts right now, so I’m willing to consider any ideas, no matter how absurd.”

“She went north,” Tim said.

Sergeant Grey looked at him consideringly. “How did you get that just from ‘Oz’?”

“That’s not important. She went north, I know it.”

“Are you willing to bet her life on it, Bradford?” Sergeant Grey asked. “We don’t have enough manpower to search an area of this size in multiple directions.”

Tim nodded. “Yes.” _Please, let me be right._

There was a heavy pause while everyone waited for their leader’s decision. “Ok then. Let’s organize all available units and resources for a search party north of this position. Make sure you have a partner and appropriate provisions; it gets cold quickly out here once the sun goes down, and we’re running out of daylight.”

The mention of a partner made Tim’s heart clench.

_Hold on, Lucy, I’m coming for you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you guys think about Lucy's whereabouts? Did Tim guess correctly?


End file.
